Rhetorical Analysis: Upon the Burning of Our House by Anne Bradstreet

1. Anne Bradstreet uses many poetic devices throughout her poem. Two important devices are end rhyme and anaphora. Anne Bradstreet's poem is about her house burning down. That incident in her was out of her control. She uses end rhyme throughout her poem to have a sense of control. She shows that because she could have used internal rhyme or no rhyme at all but using end rhyme ends every line the same which symbolizes control. Symbolically using end rhyme helps her gain back the feeling of no control in her life because of the fire. Another important poetic device used in the poem is anaphora. Anne Bradstreet's use of anaphora helps explain one tone in her poem, and he lets the reader know by saying,“ No pleasant tale shall e'er be told, Nor things be recounted done of old. No candle e'er shall shine in thee, Nor bridegroom's voice e'er heard shall be.” Throughout her use of this poetic device she lists opportunities she will never get to experience or witness because of the house burning down. Her poetic devices provide more detail for her poem. 2. Throughout Anne Bradstreet's poem her tone changes multiple times. Her tone changes from shocked to whiny and finally to accepting. She grows as a person throughout the poem as she realizes that God doesn't give you anything you can't handle. In the first three stanzas she is shocked to wake up and realize her house is burning down. She was in completely awe and called out for God: I, starting up, the light did spy, and to my God my heart did cry.” In the next three stanza's her whiny tone is shown as she names off items she has lost forever and opportunities that have been taken away from herself and her family. Finally, in the last three stanza's she tone changes to accepting because she accepts her house burning down. She scolds herself for whining about losing her possessions on earth. She realizes her real home is in...

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...In the poem Upon the Burning of OurHouse , written by AnneBradstreet, Bradstreet demonstrates many religious qualities, such as not loving her personal belongings.
Bradstreet trusts God completely. As shown in verses of her poem. In the quote "And to my God my heart did cry To strengthen me in my distress and not to leave me succor less." (lines 9-10) Even as her belongings perish in the flames, she seems to understand that God created everything and that he takes what he wants back. She seems not to care as if God will eventually make everything right.
Bradford seems to show some remorse for her lost possessions. Even though Bradford is a puritan. She starts to show some as demonstrated in lines "Here stood that trunk , and there that chest, there lay the store I counted best." ( lines 25-26) By saying this, it seems that she is saying that she loves God but she is depressed that he has taken away her possessions. Yet she only says this after she has tried to convince us that she doesn't care about her possessions. It seems as if Bradford only had one unreligious moment just caught up in the past.
In the last lines of the poem Bradford, she reverts back to her religious roots. Bradford expresses at all she really needs is God and that he will provide for her forever. This is best expressed in the quote "Yet by his gift is made thine own; There's wealth...

...empathize with her pain.
After years of reading Anne Bradstreet’s marvelous poetic verse, I have learned that time is no barrier to parallel lifestyles. Anne's inner struggles between religious piety and the acceptance of natural human failings mirrors the crevice in my own soul. Her moralistic desire to banish her "unfit" child surely caused a torrent of inner-conflict between her maternal instincts and her virtuous character. Ironically, however, by expressing these emotional thoughts in her poetry, she is actually portraying herself as an unfit Puritan, in that Puritans are instructed to honor the traditional family and embrace all traditional family roles and responsibilities. My religious upbringing inspires the same types of conflicts and contradictions from which the emotional distress can only be justly expressed on paper.
Perhaps the most palpable examples of Anne Bradstreet's disunity with her religious faith are displayed in Verses Upon The Burning Of OurHouse (July 18th, 1666). Throughout this poem, Anne tries desperately hold onto her optimism and trust in God's will, but cannot keep from bringing her true feelings of despair and resentment to light. The poem concludes with the following lines:
"Yea, so it was, and so 'twas just.
It was his own; it was not mine.
Far be it that I should repine."
By nature, the expressions "far be it" and...

...The Clever and Well Hidden Mind of AnneBradstreet
During the early 1600's Puritanism ran strong throughout early North America. AnneBradstreet, the educated and well-to-do daughter of Thomas Dudley, arrived in America during the 1630's. AnneBradstreet being a firm Puritan believer, abided by the ideas that women were man's subordinate, their help-mates, thus leaving women to be submissive. This led women's ambitions and want for self-fulfillment to be negated by religion. Bradstreet reflected her beliefs through her writing, which, she kept hidden for years until it was stolen and published in England. She hid her words as it was frowned upon during her time for a women to write. Bradstreet, being an intelligent women, covered her words in such a way that one could never condemn her as undermining man, or Puritan belief. Bradstreet used clever images, and a sharp tongue, combined with her talent to blanket them with humility, to cover her tracks. In one such poem "The Prologue", Bradstreet introduces her writing, all the while, making retorts that suggest her intelligence, and prove her worth as a writer, without objectifying her beliefs, or her position as a women during her time.
The first stanza in "The Prologue" is introductory, Bradstreet's first few lines are set down as a kind of safety net for the...

...Upon the Burning of OurHouse
by AnneBradstreet
LITERARY FOCUS: THE PLAIN STYLE
The Puritans favored “plainness” in all things: in dress, in the architecture and design of their churches, in their forms of worship, and in language. Unlike the ornate “high style” popular in England at the time, the Puritan plain style used simple sentences and common words from everyday speech. The plain style contained few or no classical allusions, Latin quotations, or elaborate figures of speech. The plain style, Puritans felt, was much more effective in revealing God’s truth than the ornate style. Despite the fact that the style used by Puritan writers now seems hard to read, it was considered simple and direct in the 1600s. Although Anne Bradstreet’s “Upon the Burning of OurHouse” contains some figurative language, it is a good example of the plain style.
REVIEW SKILLS
As you read “Upon the Burning of OurHouse,” notice the way the following literary devices are used. RHYME The repetition of vowel sounds in accented syllables and all syllables following. METER A pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Make It Plain In the left column of the chart below are two descriptions of everyday objects written in an ornate style. Rewrite each description in plain style_as a...

...Heather Herring
ENG 2130
13 February 2013
Puritan Women Roles and Anne Bradstreet’s Thoughts on These Roles
The Puritans were a very religious group of people. They always worshipped God and followed their church duties. They also saw men as superior to women. AnneBradstreet was a Puritan woman born in the 1600s. She was a brilliant writer and wanted her talents shown, but she had a hard time with this profession because of the roles Puritan women were to have. Today her work is very well known and has inspired many women and men. You may be wondering how her work became known if she was in a time period where women were not to have such careers. After reading this essay, you should have a better understanding of how AnneBradstreet felt about the Puritan roles of women and what exactly those roles were.
The Puritans were a well- educated group. They were also extremely strict when it came to church attendance. Since they were an extremely religious group, worship was very important for them and their families. The Puritans first came to America in 1620 from New England because they feared oppression from their ministers. They also wanted more people to live as Puritans. Over time the Puritans made their way to America and the religion began to become more known. However, even though the religion became known, it was always a minority in America because of the various religions already here. “In...

... 2014
Three Life Lessons
Literary Analysis of “Upon the Burning of ourHouse”
“Fire, Fire!” these are the cries that woke the poet AnneBradstreet one ordinary night and changed her life forever. The fire inspired the poem “Verses Upon the Burning of ourHouse”. This poem is written from her personal experience and reflection, which is a trademark of her work. She is often referred to as America’s first “authentic” female poet. She expresses her suffering to God, yet writes of at least three life lessons she learned as she watched her house turn ashes.
AnneBradstreet is a Puritan wife and mother of eight children living in the seventeenth century.(Piercy 17) In many of her poems she portrays the struggles of being a Puritan woman and in the poem ‘Upon the Burning of ourHouse” it is no different. Anne reflects back to that dreadful night when she could do nothing, but helplessly watch her house burn, taking all of her worldly belongings with it. She grieves the loss of these possessions and then quickly scolds herself for forgetting that as a Puritan, there is a much greater reward waiting for her in heaven. (Richardson) This is evident in lines 54-55 where Anne...

...﻿RhetoricalAnalysis
Abraham Lincoln’s “Second Inaugural Address” and Emily Dickinson’s “Success is Counted Sweet,” are two inspirational pieces of art that fall under two different types of discourses. The “Second Inaugural Address,” is a great example and definition of what Rhetoric is. It encompasses all four resources of languages- argument, appeal, arrangement, and artistic devices. “Success is Counted Sweet,” doesn’t cover the four resources of language that apply to rhetoric; therefore, it is categorized as a poem.
According to the chapter, “rhetoric addresses unresolved issues that do not dictate a particular outcome and in the process it engages our value commitments.” (15). We see how Lincoln’s inaugural speech tries to engage in the values of the people as he brings up the main issue that has effected the country, the Civil War. During the time of Lincoln’s “Second Inaugural Address,” he was facing a divided nation in the midst of a civil war. Lincoln built an argument within his speech with a goal set in mind: To establish a common ground or compromise between the North and the South.
Lincoln only hopes to change the outcome of the nation by stating, “with high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.” This shows that the unresolved issue has no dictated outcome, but he can only hope for a better future for the nation.
A great rhetoric calls people to action and Abraham Lincoln does so...

...In the three poems AnneBradstreet writes in memory of her grandchildren−Elizabeth, Anne, and Simon−she expresses grief and sorrow and doubts the intention of God’s will. Her emotion evolves in each poem from quiet acceptance to thinly veiled sarcasm. This progression represents Bradstreet’s ongoing struggle to embrace the traditional Puritanical view of accepting God’s will as final explanation of all things.
Throughout her life, Bradstreet suffers her share of personal tragedy, and in the Puritan tradition, she attributes it to evidence of God’s will. Leonard Unger notes: “For the Puritan, of course, every personal trial had its theological significance” (100). However, in dealing with the deaths of her grandchildren, it is her intense grief and overwhelming sense of loss that compel her to question, and at times challenge, the meaning of God’s will, consciously knowing this is against the Puritan doctrine. The elegies reflect Bradstreet’s effort in trying to balance her struggle to accept, understand, and define her devotion to her family and the physical world against the spiritual definition of God and the expectations of her faith.
Anne Bradstreet’s poetry, both in style and substance, embodies who she is as a person: a Puritan, a woman, a wife, a mother, and a poet. Unger notes, “Bradstreet was aware that she was a woman poet, not just a poet,” (114) and that “She wrote...